"Non-Starter" wrote in message
...
"luriko" wrote in message
.. .

Anybody own one or have any advise?

By the way, like a lot of very successful products, the Mantis has a group
of people who like to convince you that it is not as good as it really is.
There are good reasons why so many gardeners own the Mantis.

The only way for you to know the truth is for you to try it out, and let
them pay to take it back if you don't like it.


I did try it and was unimpressed. I also didn't think that much of the
equivalent Honda, although it may be better engineered. If I were going to
use a tiller very often, I wouldn't get the Mantis simply because it was too
loud and vibrated too much. It also had a tendency to get large stones
jammed in the tines. Since I only use a tiller once a year, sometimes less,
it seems more economical to rent one and let someone else deal with the
storage and maintenance. As others have pointed out, the Mantis and the
smallest Honda are more like cultivators than tillers. For cultivating a
bed that has previously been worked and amended, I can use the cultivator
attachment for my Ryobi.